Fall season

UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance has achieved national prominence, with an MFA program that consistently ranks among the top 3 in the country (alongside those at Yale and New York University).

Among its distinguished alumni are the Broadway star Danny Burstein and the designer Paloma Young, who won a Tony Award this year for costuming the La Jolla Playhouse-launched Broadway hit “Peter and the Starcatcher.”

As the department marks its 40th anniversary, here’s what’s in store for its fall season besides “In the Red and Brown Water”:

“Elizabeth I”: Kate Jopson directs Paul Foster’s story of a rogue acting troupe that performs an illicit piece about the iron-fisted British queen. In the Potiker Theatre, now through Nov. 25.

“Lumping in Fargo”: Bryan Reynolds and Michael Hooker’s musical (directed by department Chairman Jim Carmody) is an ambitious and fanciful collage of Shakespeare works and more. The piece has its final performances today, 2 and 7 p.m. at the Arthur Wagner Theatre on campus.

“Arts in Action: Connected”: Patricia Rincon and Robert Castro, plus UCSD MFA candidates Natalia Valerdi, Lisa Frank and Sammy Mitchell, created this site-specific dance/theater piece. It takes place Nov. 30 and Dec. 1; attendees meet at the north entry to Atkinson Hall, across from the P502 parking lot.

Growing up in the housing projects of Miami’s Liberty City, Tarell Alvin McCraney yearned to become a dancer. n Now he makes language pirouette off the page — and has caused theater types to trip over their own feet in excitement over his bold writing. n McCraney, who just turned 32, is fast gaining a reputation as one of the most promising young voices in American theater. Much of that buzz comes on the strength of a trilogy known as “The Brother/Sister Plays.”

In January, the Old Globe Theatre will stage “The Brothers Size,” the second play of the three. But right now, UC San Diego’s Department of Theatre and Dance is introducing San Diego audiences to McCraney with “In the Red and Brown Water,” the first installment of the “Brother/Sister” saga. (It’s one of four productions in the department’s fall season.)

The plays, which chronicle the plight of disenfranchised African-Americans across two generations, are connected by family ties among characters. But they’re also linked by the way McCraney messes with theatrical convention — making characters speak their own stage directions, for example.

“I’m always interested in the dexterity of words, the dexterity of actors,” explains the playwright, speaking by phone from Chicago, where for two years he has been a member of the renowned Steppenwolf Theatre.

“In that way, it’s similar to ballets or dance. A ballerina is never just dancing with a partner. She’s dancing with a partner for an audience.”